Abstract

'Genocide', 'totalitarianism', 'mass warfare': these are among the immediate historiographical coordinates that spring to mind when thinking about evil and barbarism in the context of European modernity. The aim of this volume is to begin the task of generating a new set of coordinates, ones which set established preoccupations within a more expansive interpretive framework. These coordinates are threefold: political, in terms of the discourses and practices of liberal governance; historiographical, in terms of moving beyond philosophical and empirical approaches to evil and barbarism; and chronological, in terms of the various assumptions regarding human agency, free will and time that emerged in the wake of the Enlightenment. The principal geographical focus is imperial Britain, but the volume also features essays which address colonial encounters abroad, including those of France and Germany.